


what came in between

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: ASoIaF / Game of Thrones fics [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Oneshot, POV Ned Stark, Period-Typical Victim Blaming, Pre-A Game of Thrones, Pre-Canon, R Plus L Equals J, Speculation, set in the books so canon-level ambiguity about whether R+L was a love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23542195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Ned Stark knows how the war began and how it ended. What he can never know is what came in between.Oneshot.
Relationships: Lyanna Stark & Ned Stark, Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen
Series: ASoIaF / Game of Thrones fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586470
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	what came in between

After the war, these are the things Ned Stark knows: how it began and how it ended.

He knows how it began, the whole kingdom knows: with blue winter roses and burnt flesh, with a prince’s lust and a brother’s rage and a king’s madness.

(He knows, too, what only a crannogman and a wolf pup know, of mismatched armor and a stolen shield with the old gods painted on it. The crack of guilt in Benjen’s voice, the Watch he keeps.)

He knows, too, how it ended. Red-soaked red-wrapped corpses that were named dragonspawn, and murder that was named justice. Bones and a babe birthed in blood, when he had vowed to bring his sister home. Seven against three outside a tower that contained no joy, only death and promises.

He knows all of this. What he can never know is what came in between.

Ned sits in the godswood of his home, for once not here to polish Ice or to pray, but simply to think. He has never been able to breathe as easily as he does here, with the sky overcast and a hushed stillness all around him, rich with the scent of pine and frost. 

Robert claims that Rhaegar must have raped Lyanna thousands upon thousands of times, for the she-wolf would never have simply been taken, and she was meant to be his. Ned is well aware it was otherwise. Lyanna had looked dismally upon the prospect of life as Lady of Storm’s End, or any Lady’s life, for that matter. Under this very heart tree, she had spoken of her fears and Ned had half-heartedly tried to reassure her (what might have happened if he reassured her properly?).

He hears rustling in the branches and looks up to see a bird arcing into flight. In truth, he thinks Lyanna would have been happiest here: in the North, in this godswood where she and Benjen had played at swords and fallen in ponds, in the barrowlands where she and Brandon would ride horses across the Rills. But Lyanna was a Lord Paramount’s only daughter, and staying here all her life here was foolish fantasy.

She had feared a husband who wandered… so why would she flee one such man and right into another wandering man’s arms?

 _Did_ she flee? Howland and Benjen had told him that Lyanna was charmed by the silver prince who admired her chivalry and kept her secret, but was he charming enough that she would cast all else aside to run away with him? Perhaps she had been smitten with him, and he had capitalized on that and preyed on her fears…

But surely no matter how smitten she was, she would never have wanted to play second fiddle to his first wife. No matter how bedazzled, all the love in her heart would have died when word came of Father and Brandon. Ned may not have been Lyanna’s champion or companion the way Brandon and Benjen were, but he _knew_ Lyanna, knew the essence of her. She loved her father and brothers. She prided herself on being of the North. She recklessly defended her father’s bannermen. She would never have abided a husband who did not acknowledge that.

 _Husband._ Anyone who might have known the truth of that is dead now. Rhaegar was already wed, but Targaryens had taken second brides before, and half the Kingsguard were outside that tower. That has to mean something.

Whatever it meant, whatever was there between Rhaegar and Lyanna, a child came of it. A child that Lyanna bled out to birth, that with her dying breath she begged Ned to protect. 

Surely if she loved her child so much, it means he was born of love?

Could she have loved Jon elsewise?

But Ned cannot be so sure. He has seen women during the Rebellion violated by soldiers or bandits and left with swelling bellies, women who were fond mothers and yet loathed the criminals responsible for their children. His own lady wife as well: Catelyn loves Robb fiercely, and she had only dutiful politeness for him on their wedding night, and now the coldest of courtesy after he returned from a year at war with a bastard. 

Just because Lyanna loved Jon doesn’t mean she loved Rhaegar.

He wants to believe that Lyanna was not raped, that she found some measure of joy with Rhaegar… But why didn’t she spare a thought for her family, not so much as a raven?

Did Rhaegar tell her that he would take care of it, and then lie?

Did she know about Father and Brandon? Did Rhaegar hide it from her?

Why did Rhaegar leave orders for the Kingsguard to kill him?

Did he lie to her until she was so great with child that she could not leave?

He stumbles over a tree root, and only then does he realize that he had stood up and begun pacing in his consternation. His knuckles are bruised but fortunately not bleeding. It is a most undignified position for the Lord of Winterfell to find himself in.

But no less undignified than the position the Crown Prince of the realm made for himself.

Absconding for a year, even when a Lord Paramount and his heir had been murdered, and finally returning to defend his father and wage war against the Houses the Targaryens wronged. 

Why did they bleed the realm if not for love?

Would it make any difference if they were?

Even if she was in love with him at first, did Lyanna stay that way?

 _Prince Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna_ , the smallfolk whisper. Robert rages _The dragonbeast stole my she-wolf_ , and perhaps both are right. But however the tree grew, it still bore fruit, and the fruit must be plucked and cultivated.

Wind rustles the red-leaved branches like a sigh, and Ned rises.

He has only what he knows, and he takes comfort in this: that even after whatever befell Lyanna in those two years, even when nearly all the life had left her, she still had enough love left for Jon, and enough faith in her brother that she trusted him to keep his promises.


End file.
